Category Archives: Tax Justice Network

It has been a super busy week here at Wrapper Towers, so this is a shorter update than usual.

Here at the TJN we were all devastated by the news of the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Daphne had for many years taken aim at the corruption and criminality that is becoming endemic to this small island tax haven.

In other news, our CEO Alex Cobham has been busy over the last week giving presentations at the Pan Africa Conference on Illicit Financial Flows in Nairobi, where he spoke on the campaign brewing to remove the target to reduce tax avoidance by multinational companies from the Sustainable Development Goals. You can see the slides from his presentation and listen to an audio recording here.

And just a few days later Alex was in Washington DC at the annual meeting of the World Bank Group talking about taxing wealth and addressing wealth inequality.

Alex has written about the event, here, where you can also see a video of the presentation.

Finally, do take a look at the excellent new research published by the Financial Transparency Coalition this week. Their new report – Unequal Exchange – looks at the implementation of the Automatic Exchange of Information System. Automatic Exchange is designed to combat tax evasion and other financial crimes by making banks and other financial institutions report to foreign tax authorities when a citizen of their country opens an account. The system isn’t universal, with countries able to opt in and to decide which other countries they wish to exchange with. The FTC has analysed the current state of play, and found that the vast majority of information flows are between high income countries, with lower income countries benefitting very little from the system.

Welcome to this month’s latest podcast and radio programme inRead the full article… The post Our October 2017 Spanish language Podcast: Justicia ImPositiva, nuestro podcast de octubre 2017 appeared first on Tax Justice Network.

Austalia: Come hide with us – bean counters raid big law firms The Conversation“Could the incursion be designed also to allow the accounting firms to assert legal professional privilege over tax advice for their multinational clients so they can keep that advice out of the hands of the Australian Tax Office?”

Shell Executives Charged With Bribery In Italy PM News Nigeria“In April, Global Witness and Finance Uncovered revealed that Shell executives knew that $1.1bn they paid for OPL 245 would go to Dan Etete and were likely to be used in a vast bribery scheme”

Italian fraudsters and mafia associates are having fun with the lack of regulations at the UK business registry Companies House, as well as the well known poor language skills of the Brits.

It has been revealed that an alleged mafia money launderer used UK companies to help him move the proceeds of crime.

The UK was chosen because of the extremely light touch regulatory environment which means that practically anyone can set up a company in no time at all. At the same time, the use of a UK company in a chain of companies can bestow an illusion of respectability on the group.

Indeed the Italians it seemed decided to test how far the UK’s no questions asked culture went when filling out their forms.

Companies they set up had addresses like “0, Street of the 40 thieves”. Companies were set up by people with fake names such as “the chicken thief” who put down their occupation as “fraudster”. All of these titles were in Italian, but still you might think someone might have checked what the Italian for fraudster was?

This week it has been one year since the Panama papers were released, and a number of organisations around the world have been marking the occasion though the global week of action for tax justice.

In London, activists from the TJN and Methodists for Tax Justice held a protest outside the offices of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Why PwC? Well the auditor has been one of the biggest promoters of tax avoidance schemes for multinationals, as well as having been implicated in a host of other corporate scandals.

From watchdogs to lapdogs

But of course it isn’t just PwC that has been asleep at the wheel whilst the companies they audit crash. A new report out from the Atul Shah of the University of Suffolk Business School looks at the failure of KPMG to warn shareholders of HBOS, a major UK bank, of problems with the company before they collapsed in 2008.

The new tax year means a series of changes to taxes and benefits, and one we are particularly happy to see is the lowering of the benefits cap. This is a policy that began with the TPA when we called for it in our Spending Plan and one we have campaigned for since. Our Research Director Alex Wild spoke about it on BBC Panorama on Wednesday night. You can watch him here (part one) and here (part two).

You may remember last week that our Chairman, Andrew Allum, predicted that the Chancellor might U-turn on his decision to raise National Insurance. Well, he was right. While the Chancellor’s aim was to make the system fairer, so the self-employed would pay roughly the same as employees, the move went down badly amongst the public, the media and even the party’s own MPs.

The move was reminiscent of George Osborne’s attempted ‘pasty tax’ back in 2012, and goes to show that marginal tinkering around the edges of the tax system simply does not work. Parliamentarians may indeed be worried that the changing nature of work will erode the tax base, but instead of fiddling with individual levies, they should use this opportunity to undergo a full review of our overly complicated, often punitive tax system. The first place they should start is our 2012 Single Income Tax, which you can read online here.

Stories about Uber, eBay and Donald Trump appearing with best wishes from the team at the Tax Justice Network.

US – One particularly interesting article comes from the New York Times, an op-ed written by two former White House ethics counsels. It was their job to check the tax returns of presidential nominees under both the Bush and Obama administrations. In their view Donald wouldn’t have made the cut.

Ireland – Comedy tax policy of the week goes to Ireland. Finance Minister Michael Noonan has said he is cracking down on individuals who use tax havens to hide their money. Didn’t mention anything about the multinationals funneling billions through Ireland every day, undermining the tax systems of other countries.

Malaysia- the ramifications of the 1MDB scandal in Malaysia continue to rock the world, with the Singaporean government shutting down one Swiss Bank, and allegations surfacing of the money being tied to White House lobbying.

Stories from the TJN Blog and links to stories from around the world about multinational corporations and their Tax manipulation/avoidence/evasion

“Facebook UK’s accounts show specific issues, but point also to the real problem: that major multinational companies appear to be able to pick and choose, unlike the rest of us, where and how much tax they will pay. Theresa May has said her government will fight back against tax avoidance – if the Prime Minister is serious, she will immediately implement the tax transparency measure that passed in the new Finance Bill so that the public can see which companies are meeting their UK responsibilities.

“There are two main points of interest in these accounts: first, it appears that Facebook UK has paid no tax, despite the misleading spin being put on the company’s position; and second, that Facebook continues to claim that its UK operations are significantly less profitable than elsewhere.

Welcome to the tax justice weekly, a weekly roundup of all the news from the world of tax justice.

EU Leaks – a new platform for whistleblowers

From the Greens / Europe Free Alliance in the European Parliament, a new initiative called EU Leaks: EUleaks is a European platform where you can submit information in a highly secure and anonymous way. Transparency and accountability are essential for democratic governance. The EUleaks project provides a platform for increasing transparency by providing a new […] The post EU Leaks – a new platform for whistleblowers appeared first on Tax Justice Network.

World leaders were also meeting in New York for the annual opening of the general assembly. Tax justice issues were on the radar, with the Foreign Minister of Equador using the opportunity to repeat calls for the establishment of a global tax body to co-ordinate agreement on international tax rules.